Neuroprotective Effects of Chinese Rice Wine Fermented with Fu Brick Tea on H 2 O 2 ‐induced PC12 Cells

Abstract

Chinese rice wine, as one of rice-based fermented foods with thousand-year history, is receiving more and more attention recently. Numerous new approaches of making supplementations have been created, such as fermentation with Lycium ruthenicum Murr., Zea mays L. ceretina kulesh, Diospyros lotus L. and so on. Fu brick tea is rich in antioxidant polyphenols like catechins, theaflavins and other bioactive compounds, which consequently linked to the protection abilities against chronic diseases, such as cancer, aging and cardiovascular disorders. Previously, we found CRW fermented with FBT (CRW-FBT) increased the population of yeasts and fungi, enhanced master extracellular enzyme activities, as well as ameliorated the profile of aroma compounds. Besides, it has been authenticated that CRW-FBT hydroalcoholic extracts acted a positive contributor to increase the content of polyphenols and improve the antioxidant activities, including scavenging free radicals and chelating oxidative metals. Therefore, we studied the neuroprotective effects of extracts on H2O2-induced apoptosis mediated by oxidative stress. PC12 cells exposed to H2O2 were utilized to construct a neurobiological oxidative damage cell model. The potential neuroprotective effects were investigated after the extracts pretreatment with different concentrations. The results showed that CRW-FBT hydroalcoholic extracts inhibited the decrease of cell viability induced by H2O2, in which the inhibition ratios of CRW-FBT treatments were much higher than that of CRW pretreatment. Flow cytometry and Western Blot were used to analyze the pathogenic mechanism of cell apoptosis. CRW-FBT significantly decreased the intracellular reactive oxygen species level in a dose-dependent manner, and prevented PC12 cells in oxidative stress from apoptosis through partially attenuating the cell cycle arrest, reversing the caspase-3 activity and enhancing the antioxidant enzyme activities. Moreover, the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione were increased when the concentration of the extracts increased from 50 to 400 μg/mL. CRW-FBT extracts rich in polyphenols reversed the mitochondrial membrane potential reduction and promoted lipid per-oxidization induced by H2O2. In conclusion, our findings highlighted that Fu brick tea was a high-quality functional food supplementation to participate in CRW fermentation for improving the capability of restoring neural dysfunction caused by oxidative damage.